Rule, Jane Vance

Jane Vance Rule, writer (b at Plainfield, NJ 28 March 1931, d at Galiano Island, BC, 27 November 2007). Educated at Mills College, California, and University College, London, England, Jane Rule moved to Vancouver in 1956. She was assistant director at International House at the University of British Columbia (1958-59) and lectured in English and creative writing at UBC (1959-76). In 1976 she moved to Galiano Island, BC.

Jane Rule was an acute observer of social and emotional relationships, homosexual and heterosexual, and wrote about them with refreshing candour. Her novels included Desert of the Heart (1964), This Is Not for You (1970), The Young in One Another's Arms (1977) and Contract with the World (1980), Memory Board (1987) and After the Fire (1989).

Jane Rule also published short stories (Themes for Diverse Instruments, 1975; Outlander, 1981, Inland Passage and Other Stories, 1985), essays (A Hot-Eyed Moderate, 1984) and a study of lesbian writers, Lesbian Images (1975). Rule gave up novel and story writing in the early 1990s in favour of participation in local and national literary events and gay rights causes such as the Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium's case against Canada Customs.